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Blogging for gun safety reform and changing the conversation about the role of guns and gun violence in our communities. Common sense gun laws and gun safety reform and gun rights are not mutually exclusive.

I think it’s a great idea for a state to have an official state gun, don’t you? I mean, why not let the people of your state know that some things are to be honored and revered as special. In Minnesota the state bird is a Loon. That’s because the Loon is beloved here. The sound of Loon calls are on almost every one of the 10,000 lakes in Minnesota. There’s nothing like that sound in the middle of a summer night while staying at our cabin in the summer time. The open windows let in the warm ( or cool) night time air and also the sounds of nature.

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) last week tweeted a picture of himself and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the leader of the House’s Benghazi investigation, holding an AR-15 in a House office building.

The photo raised eyebrows, because Washington is home to some of the nation’s strictest gun laws, including a ban on the AR-15.

But members of Congress are exempted from rules that otherwise prohibit people from having assault weapons, including AR-15s, Capitol Police said.

The District’s gun laws “specifically provide that members of Congress may maintain firearms within the confines of their office and they and any employee or agent of any member of Congress may transport within the Capitol Grounds firearms unloaded and securely wrapped,” Capitol Police spokeswoman Kimberly Schneider told The Hill.

“For years, the District of Columbia has infringed on its residents’ Second Amendment rights and rendered them vulnerable to criminals who could care less what the gun laws are,” the Florida Republican said in a statement. “This legislation will finally allow D.C.’s law-abiding residents and visitors access to firearms for sporting or lawful defense of themselves and their homes, businesses and families.”

Mr. Rubio’s “Second Amendment Enforcement Act of 2015” would make it easier for D.C. residents to purchase firearms and carry them in public by gutting the city’s gun laws and blocking the D.C. Council from enacting gun control measures. Among its changes, it would eliminate D.C. gun registration requirements, overturn the city’s ban on semi-automatic firearms and create a “shall issue” permitting system for concealed carry licenses.

Something smells of pandering. Rubio wants visitors and dignitaries visiting our nation’s Capitol to be surrounded by gun carrying folks except when they get to the Capitol building. What could possibly go wrong? Check the Ohh Shoot blog for how often “law abiding” citizens make stupid and dangerous mistakes with their guns.

Here’s another article about the Capitol AR-15 display. So what is the message here? Sure it’s legal. And maybe the paper work was all done correctly. But here’s the thing. Why does a sitting US Congress member need to display an AR-15 in his office? Keep it at home. What we need is some common sense. This open display of a gun in the office of a US Congress member is unnecessary and inane. In the face of so many gun deaths and injuries, how does this even happen? What are people thinking? I guess it’s hard to have a clear head when you are carrying the smelly garbage of the gun lobby in order to curry favor.

Why shouldn’t licensed gun owners be stopped and questioned while carrying loaded guns openly around in public? What if the gun carrier is a felon with bad intent? What if the gun carrier is a domestic abuser on his way to shoot his partner? What if the gun carrier is an adjudicated mentally ill person on the way to shoot up a classroom of first graders? Gun rights extremists hide behind the second amendment to loosen our gun laws so that soon enough virtually anyone who wants to own and carry guns around will do so unchecked- unhindered by any laws. This is not the kind of communities the majority of us want. But this is pushed on us by the corporate gun lobby whose primary interest is in driving up profits while gun deaths are also going up.

Speaking of licensed gun owners, or not, as in the case of the new Kansas law to allow people to carry guns with no license or training, check out the poll showing Kansans with common sense. Of course we don’t want people walking around with loaded guns ho have not undergone training or background checks. THE GUN LOBBY AND THEIR BOUGHT AND PAID FOR POLITICIANS ARE WAY OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE PUBLIC. Something doesn’t smell right.

It’s as if we have lost our sense of what’s right and wrong. We have lost our ability to think clearly about public safety and what’s best for the citizens of our community. We have lost our moral compass when it comes to guns. Nothing seems to matter or make any common sense when it comes to the agenda of the gun lobby.

We will continue along this vein apparently until more tragedies occur. Until the children of some of our lawmakers use a gun in an “accidental” shooting; until the child of a lawmaker uses a gun for a suicide; until a lawmaker actually uses a gun to commit a homicide; until the good friend or a family member of a lawmaker is shot in a senseless gun death; until more small children are shot while doing what children are supposed to do- be in their classrooms learning.

For two decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been prohibited by Congress from using funds to “advocate or promote gun control.” (The National Institutes of Health faces a similar restriction.) Now there are signs the medical profession is getting fed up. In the April 7 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine is an editorial calling on physicians to demand the “resources and freedom” to do their jobs: reducing harm. Specifically, the journal calls for an end to the political blockade on research about the health effects of gun violence.

The gun lobby’s anxiety is understandable. It makes many claims, but none is more consequential than the declaration that more guns lead to greater public safety. Life (and death) across the U.S. seems toundermine that assertion daily, while a smattering of research, conducted despite the blockade, reinforces doubts about the National Rifle Association’s thesis.

Perhaps extensive research would authenticate the NRA’s claims. On the other hand, there is a chance that a solid body of social-science research would reveal its thesis as a myth. Better not to take the risk.

Not all research has been extinguished. Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of California at Davis are among the institutions that have produced notable studies in recent years. The National Institute of Justice has made limited forays into studying the criminal use of guns. But given the scope of the issue — more than 30,000 firearm deaths and tens of thousands of injuries annually — foundation grants and a bare trickle of government research can do only so much to advance understanding.

During the discussion, Huckabee shared his views on the Second Amendment by explaining that, where he comes from, the “gun nuts” are the people who support gun control and stated that if somebody broke into this house, the only reason he’d call 911 would be to tell them where to pick up the body of the intruder.

Explaining that he’s owned guns since the time he was five, Huckabee said that he cringes when he hears people say that they support the Second Amendment because it protects hunting.

“The Second Amendment is not about hunting,” he said, “this is about freedom. And I’ve heard people say ‘Huckabee is one of those gun nuts.’ Where I come from, a gun nut is a person who is irrationally afraid of a firearm because they don’t understand the nature of having one and the importance to their liberty. I don’t love guns, but I do love freedom. I love it a lot.”

Nice. Isn’t Huckabee a minister? Whatever happened to caring for and loving our neighbors like ourselves? Whatever happened to compassion? This smells of pandering and a lack of basic understanding about the problem of gun violence in American. Who needs a “leader” saying stuff like this? It stinks up the conversation about guns and gun violence that our country so desperately needs.

We are better than this. It doesn’t have to be like this. But it will be until the majority decides to rise up and demand change. It will be until we change the conversation about gun safety reform. It’s possible to freshen the air and freshen the conversation with facts and humanity. Please join a group working on the issue of gun safety reform and say “enough.”

Enough. Haven’t we had enough? If over 30,000 gun deaths a year is not enough, what is? Reasonable people can disagree about issues. But it smells when facts are denied or shoved aside in order to promote the agenda of a single issue political interest group whose main goal is profit but its’ products cause the death of innocent Americans.